A friend in Fl ( i’m in Berwick Me) received a facebook msg from me ( not messaging ) telling about my making money on a UNICEF program. It was my actual FB page and home photo. What he saw was a bogus page but it didn’t appear that way. They were clever.

When he finally phoned me and discovered what happened he was disheartened and out thousands of dollars. I changed my password, home photo, closed down the viewing of my friends and “about” portion. At the same time I was getting info from friends that I was hacked. They were saying they were getting ‘ I would like to be on your friend list’ but already was. FB has an occasional list of “these people may want to friend you”. When I scanned this list my FB page was there. The FLAG to me was the page being displayed was my former home photo NOT my new one. When I viewed the page, there were a list of about 10 friends and nothing else. My fl friend was one of them. It appeared to me that I was viewing the bogus site. My question is ‘ What do I do???? ‘

Thanks Sam

Dear Sam,

Thank you for this detailed description of a scammer creating a fake account and tricking your friends into thinking they are you. This is a fairly common thing on Facebook, in fact, I reported a fake account just a few days ago.

What you should do is report the bogus site to Facebook. They are very good about quickly shutting down these sites. Here is how you do that.

1. Go to the fake site.

2. Click on the icon with three dots (an ellipsis) on the cover photo, and from the drop down list, click on “Report”.

3. Answer the questions, you will find an option for reporting an account that is pretending to be you.

Facebook will look into the report and shut down the bogus site. I have found that it usually only takes a few hours.

Elizabeth

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Elizabeth Boston is a Web designer, Social Media Consultant and managing editor of, “Ask The Computer Lady”.
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My Facebook has been hacked. My name but another picture
And posts that are not mine.

Help! Thank you, Sharon

Dear Sharon,

Cyber criminals don’t have to hack into your facebook account in order to create an account almost identical to yours. Then, they can pretend to be you, and try to get your friends and family to accept them as friends, then they will pretend to be you and try to scam your friends and family.

If you can still log into your Facebook account and make posts, then it is not your account that has been hacked and you don’t need to do anything with your account.

Instead, if you are sure the Facebook account with your name is someone trying to spoof your account (instead of someone else with the same name as you) you can simply report the account to Facebook and they will quickly take the account down. Just go to Facebook and search for “Report an Impostor Account”.

Elizabeth

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Elizabeth Boston is a Web designer, Social Media Consultant and managing editor of, “Ask The Computer Lady”.
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I read all of your newsletters and find them very helpful and written for the non-technical minds. Thank you.

I have a question about FaceBook tags. Is there a FaceBook setting so that I will not be included in my friends’ tags and still follow my friends?

Thank you, Linda

Dear Linda,

When your friends make a post, or post a picture, they can tag you by mentioning your name, or tagging you in the picture.

While there doesn’t appear to be a setting to stop your friends from tagging you (sometimes simply asking them to not tag you will be the best solution) you can turn on a setting in Facebook that will allow you to manually approve posts that you have been tagged in before they show up on your timeline.

It is important to note that this will only stop them from showing up on your timeline, not other peoples timelines.

There is also a setting where you can control who can see posts and photos that you have been tagged in.

Both these settings are found in the same place.

1. Click on the small triangle located at the top-right corner of your Facebook page.

2. Click on “Settings” in the drop down menu.

3. When the Settings page loads, click on “Timeline and Tagging” in the left column.

4. The first timeline setting has a section where you can review posts friends tag you in before they post to your timeline. Just turn this setting on.

5. In the next section, where it says, “who can see things on my timeline?” you can change the settings to “Only Me” so that others can’t see the posts.

You can change as many settings as you want in this section, in fact if you change everything to “Only Me” you will be almost invisible on Facebook.

I hope this helps.

Elizabeth

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Elizabeth Boston is a Web designer, Social Media Consultant and managing editor of, “Ask The Computer Lady”.
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How can I stop FACEBOOK from sending me an e-mail whenever my friends post something on FACEBOOK?

Joyce

Dear Joyce,

You can easily control when Facebook sends you an email alert and when it doesn’t. Let’s take a look:

First, log into Facebook, and click on the page of a friend you want to change settings for.

At the top of the page, to the right of your friend’s name, is a small box that says, “Friends” with a check mark in front of it, and a triangle after. Click on that triangle to access a drop-down list.

The first item on the drop-down list is, “Get Notifications” You should have a check mark in front of it if you are getting emails every time they post. Just click on that check mark to turn it off, and you will no longer get notifications every time they post.

Elizabeth

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Elizabeth Boston is a Web designer, Social Media Consultant and managing editor of, “Ask The Computer Lady”.
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I hope you can help me with a problem I’m having with my Facebook. Is there a way to put pictures and articles on to it from emails that people send to me? I can’t find any good instructions on how to do it.

Thank you for any help you can give!

Sincerely, Ferne

Dear Ferne,

Depending on what email program you use, it is probably not possible to post content directly from your email account to your Facebook page.

In order to put content from an email on your Facebook page, you would need to first save that content on your computer, and then upload it to Facebook.

Once you have saved your photo on your computer, just go to your Facebook page and click on “Add Photos/Video” just above where it says, “What’s on your mind?”.

A windows explorer window will open. This allows you to find your photo, click on it, and then click on the “Open” button.

Wait while your photo uploads, you can type a description while you are waiting.

When the photo is ready, just click the “Post” button to share it with your friends.

Elizabeth

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Elizabeth Boston is a Web designer, Social Media Consultant and managing editor of, “Ask The Computer Lady”.
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How you put a photo on Facebook depends on what device you are using to access facebook. For these directions, I am going to assume you are using your desktop or laptop computer running the Windows operating system.

First, log into your Facebook account, and click on the “Home” link to go to your news feed.

At the top of your news feed, there are three links for you; Update Status, Add Photos/Video and Create Photo Album. Click on the link that says, Add Photos/Video.

A window will open that allows you to browse your computer and find the photo you want to put on Facebook. If, for example, your picture is in your “Pictures” folder, click on “Pictures” in the left column, find your picture and click on it to select it.

Click the “Open” button at the bottom of the dialog window.

In a few moments, your photo will load on your facebook page, and you will have the chance to type any comments you might have about the photo.

When you have finished typing comments, click on the blue, “Post” button and your photo will be on Facebook for all your friends to see.

Elizabeth

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Elizabeth Boston is a Web designer, Social Media Consultant and managing editor of, “Ask The Computer Lady”.
Connect with Elizabeth on Google+